- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: crypto restrictions
by Timothy C. May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:51 AM -0800 2/14/97, anand abhyankar wrote: >Jeremiah A Blatz wrote: > >thanx for ur answer but then i have another question. > >1) is it illegal to develop an encryption tool (s/w) outside the US >which uses > 40 bit size session keys and then import that s/w inside of >the US. There are no import restrictions at this time. The IDEA cipher, for example, was developed in Europe and U.S. developers can import it and put in products. However, once imported it becomes controlled for export again! Also, it may be a violation of the EAR regs to deliberately seek to bypass the export laws by arranging for foreign development of a module which is then "dropped in" when the product is shipped outside the U.S. It may also be illegal to include "software hooks" for crypto modules to be attached to. Exactly how far one can go, or what it might take to trigger a government prosecution for such actions, is unclear. The laws are not very precise, and court precedents are lacking. (There are many wrinkles here; you seem to have a lot of questions, which is good. However, it is best for you to read a comprehensive article on these issues--use a Web search engine to find the latest versions.) --Tim May Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside" We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Private property & the cypherpunks list(s) (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 02:08:21 -0800 > From: Greg Broiles <gbroiles(a)netbox.com> > Subject: Private property & the cypherpunks list(s) > Jim Choate wrote: > > > Please explain how making submissions de facto public domain censors > > anyone? > > What the fuck is "de facto public domain"? It's public domain, or it's > not. The same thing as the current 'de facto copyright'. It's copyrighted or it's not. What's your point here? > Your scheme imposes a cost (loss of intellectual property rights) > against authors who would like to make themselves heard. I am taking intellectual property rights from nobody. If anything I am giving unlimited intellectual rights to the material to humankind for posterity. Sorta cypherpunkish, don't you think? > It also > prevents a certain class of messages (those messages whose status is > "copyright claimed") from being distributed. Completely untrue. What it does is say "anything published which does not explicity have a copyright related statement on it is public domain". If you want to keep rights to it, that is fine. Just tell 'em that up front. The actual cost to those of us who feel that statements made in such a forum as this are inherently intended for the betterment of mankind, and therefore a priori copyright is not in the best interest of distribution of those ideas, is no different than the cost under defacto copyright to use fair use headers for public domain material. I believe that such an approach would be economicaly helpful as well. It would provide a market for collecting, organizing, and distributing the content of such material for wider distribution. Under the current standard a small business which wanted to connect to the network, archive the material, catalog it, package it, and distribute it would technicaly have to contact the 1,000+ members and get their specific fair use contracts resolved. This way there is nothing to resolve, if there is a copyright notice and doesn't specificaly permit such use that message would be dropped. The rest would be available for wider distribution and storage. > Further, your suggestion > that posters be required to include a "fair use header" is compelled > speech. So is requiring me to post a "fair use header" if I want my material public domain by default. You call it 'tomatoe', I call it 'tomahto'. It comes down to what is best for society and what 'best' means. If best in your book equals 'maximize profit potential' then the current standard is best. If, however, your definition is 'spread the idea as far and wide as possible, may it flourish and have many offspring' then we need to go back to the old standard. > That's three flavors of "censorship" right there. I thought that the new > list(s) were supposed to allow anyone to say anything they wanted. None of these qualify as censorship, I am not applying anything to anyone that is not being currently applied now. I am only taking the alternate tack, which was the legal tact until mid-80's. > (Does "no fair use" count as a "fair use header"? It's not legally > enforceable, but it seems like the easiest way to specify "minimum fair > use required by law". If not, are you planning to moderate the list to > make sure that people use only approved fair use headers? Hmm.) No need to moderate the list, it does it for me. I don't do anything with the messages, simply let them come and go. Those with no header would be fair game for anyone to use for any purpose they chose. I would hold that your position of implied copyright is a censorship because it prohibits persons from using the material without the authors permission (and probably paying a fee, economic censorship). Cypherpunkish? I think not. Mercenary, could be. > Even if the "copyright abandonment by implication" trick works (and I > suspect it will not, It certainly did until the mid-80's. It certainly is no more of a trick than the forcing of copyright on those who don't want it. > given that an assignment or transfer of copyright > must be in writing, 17 USC 204; And I hold that the submission of a subscription request and the acceptance of the subscription notice conditions received as a reply qualify as that written transfer. If they are unacceptable unsubscribe, which is described in detail in the same subscription notice that details the conditions of access. > and abandonment is essentially an > assignment or transfer to the public domain), it will not apply to all > text sent to the list. A good thing. > A person cannot abandon or assign something they > do not have; so if someone sends a message to the list which contains > text whose copyright is held by a third party, that copyright will still > be valid. That is a good thing. A person should not harm another or their property without their prior permission. > So what you've got is a list where you can't be sure that its contents > are public domain, and a draconian rule requiring authors to give up > their rights to what they've written. I have not required anyone to give up anything. All I have required is that authors specificaly state that they want to retain rights to the document. This is no more draconian than requiring a person to write a public domain release on their text if that is their choice. What we have now is a list where the messages come flying across my screen and I can't use them anywhere else unless I go and get somebodies permission first. Is that freedom of speech? Freedom of the press? Sounds more like economic strangulation of technological and social progress and the hindering of the spreading of knowledge. > Do you imagine that all of the many-majordomo servers will implement > your "public domain only" rule, or only yours? No, the point was that different servers could have different policies. That hypothesis is now thoroughly proved wrong. We also now have clear evidence that at least some of the Cypherpunk ideals are not real-world. What we have now is the imposition of these implicit regulations across all the remailers, in some cases against their will. This is not compromise but rather capitulation through duress. Implicit copyright is censorship. This realization is the reason that I dropped it for the cypherpunks list. It was clear that pressing for server-dependant policies was not tenable. > If the rule is intended to apply to all servers, and servers aren't > going to be allowed into the network I am amazed at your ability to construe things that were never stated, let alone implied. I was under the impression that a variety of access policies and various filtering schemes was one of the stated goals. I also feel you give me entirely too much credit and not enough to Igor, firebeard, and others who are involved. Whether you know it or not, they are not straw men nor pseudonyms that I employ. > without agreeing to implement it > locally, um, tell me again about that "free speech" thing? Aren't you > just taking advantage of your position as a person working on the > many-majordomos project to impose your ideas about intellectual property > on the rest of the list? Is such a strategy compatible with "free > speech"? No more so than the imposition of copyright to hinder the free and unbridled exchange of ideas. > Also, how could a rule like this possibly be compatible with a Usenet > gateway? There's no chance at all that you can expand a local rule on > your system to all of Usenet through a gateway. A very good argument on why in our current system de facto copyright actualy hinders free exchange of ideas. Thanks, I hadn't thought of that aspect. > And Declan McCullagh wrote: > > >I forward articles to cypherpunks that are copyrighted by my employers, or > >magazines like Playboy and Wired for which I write freelance pieces. > > > >I like to think these articles have some value. I will not forward any of > >them, nor would I be able to, if they magically became "public domain." > > Which are good points Strawman arguments to cover the motives of profit driving them. I suspect that if the magazine (who probably own the actual copyright) agreed to allow them to be presented in total before posting would require that some sort of explicit copyright notice be retained. I am shure the articles have some value, a check was written for them at some point I believe. > - also, don't forget that, from time to time, > people have even posted code to the cpunks list, and many software > authors like to retain copyright in their code so that they can insist > on things like noncommercial distribtion or credit where the code is > reused. If a work is truly "public domain", the author has no power to > insist on those things. Certainly they do, put the statement in the code header - just like any programmer with a clue is going to do now. All I am asking is that you give me a fair shot at figuring out what you individualy want done with your material when I see it. Should I save it for later use or simply shit-can it because I don't want to deal with the hassle of getting permission. Currently I shit-can just about everything for this reason unless it has some sort of technical chart or table I can re-arrange or is related to Advanced Squad Leader or Traveller. Does that sound like the ideal atmosphere to expand knowledge? Is that how you want your ideas and commentary to end up? Hell, under the current system I take a completely unwarranted risk if I do nothing more than print out your email and then show it to somebody else. Why? Because I don't know before hand whether that is ok with you or do you really want to retain distribution rights. To be completely safe I need to email you and ask permission to do that. Unacceptable restraint of speech. The only option that leaves me is no speech because I can't afford it. Not very cypherpunkish. > This proposed rule seems to limit postings to those which are perceived > by their authors to be without commercial or reputational value. Is that > a good idea? Not if that was what was proposed here, fortunately reality bears no resemblance to your interpretation. What I really find interesting is that in the 3 years SSZ has been up and the 8 mailing lists (with about 300 subscribers total) nobody has ever complained about the public domain policy and nobody has ever put a copyright header on their messages. All these lists are technical and several of them are directly involved with technical development of projects, some for commercial apps. Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com

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American Dissident Voices Weekly Transcripts
by Adv Info 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--------------------------------------------------------------- American Dissident Voices is a world wide radio program which deals with topics of interest that concern people of European descent. We hope that these weekly articles will offer the reader an opposing viewpoint to the major news media. For more information, please e-mail advinfo(a)dreamon.com. Please visit our World Wide Web Site at http://www.natall.com. For patriotic books and tapes, visit National Vanguard Books Online Catalog at http://www.natvan.com/cgi-bin/nvbctlg.txt?url=www.natall.com -------------------------------------------- American Dissident Voices Online Radio http://www.natall.com/radio/radio.html Dresden: A Real Holocaust by Kevin Alfred Strom The night of February 13th, and February 14th, Valentine's Day, mark an ominous anniversary in the history of Western Civilization. For beginning on the night of February 13th, 1945, occurred the destruction of Dresden. On the eve of Valentine's Day, 1945, World War II in Europe was nearly over. For all practical purposes Germany was already defeated. Italy, and Germany's other European allies, had fallen by the wayside. The Red Army was rushing to occupy vast areas of what had been Germany in the East, while the allies of the Soviets, the British and Americans, were bombing what was left of Germany's defenses and food and transportation infrastructure into nonexistence. And what was Dresden? Most of you have probably heard of Dresden China, and that delicately executed and meticulously detailed porcelain is really a perfect symbol for that city. For centuries Dresden had been a center of art and culture, and refined leisure and recreation. She was a city of art museums and theatres, circuses and sports stadia, a town of ancient half-timbered buildings looking for all the world like those of medieval England, with venerable churches and centuries-old cathedrals gracing her skyline. She was a city of artists and craftsmen, of actors and dancers, of tourists and the merchants and hotels that served them. Above all, what Dresden was, was defined during the war by what she was not. She had no significant military or industrial installations. Because of this, Dresden had become, above all other things that she was, a city of children, of women, of refugees, and of the injured and maimed who were recovering from their wounds in her many hospitals. These women and children, these wounded soldiers, these infirm and elderly people, these refugees fleeing from the brutal onslaught of the Communist armies to the East, had come to Dresden because it was commonly believed at the time that Dresden would not be attacked. Its lack of strategic or military or industrial significance, and the well-known presence of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian refugees and even Allied prisoners of war, seemed to guarantee safety to the city. Surely, it was thought, not even a the most powerful and determined enemy would be so depraved and sadistic, and so wasteful of that enemy's own resources, to attack such a city. But the people of Dresden, who were happily attending the cinema or eating dinner at home or watching the show-horses in the circus on that fateful night were wrong, wrong, wrong. And their leaders were also wrong, for the city was virtually open and undefended and only minimal civil defense preparations had been made. Dresden's population had almost doubled in the months before the attack, mainly as a result of the influx of refugees from the Eastern Front, most of them women and young children. According to British historian David Irving, the briefings given to the British bomber squadrons before the attack on Dresden were curiously different. In one, the soldiers were told that their target was the railway center of Dresden. In another, they were told that the target was a poison-gas factory. In yet another, they were told that the target was a marshalling-grounds for troops in the city. Another was told that the target was a major arsenal. These were all lies. The only marshalling-grounds for what few troops were in the area were located well outside the city. The arsenal had burned down in 1916. There were factories for toothpaste and baby-powder in Dresden, but none for poison gas. There were, in fact, no fewer than eighteen railway stations in Dresden, but only one was hit by the bombing, and that was barely touched and in fact was operating again just three days later. According to copious documentation unearthed by David Irving from the archives of the American and British governments, the point of the attack was in fact to inflict the maximum loss of life on the civilian population and particularly to kill as many refugees as possible who were fleeing from the Red Army. In achieving these goals it was highly successful. It was thus planned and executed by those at the very highest levels of the British and American governments, who to attain their purposes even lied to their own soldiers and citizens, who to this day have never been told the full story by their leaders. How was this devastating effect accomplished? At 10:10 PM on February 13th, the first wave of the attack, consisting of the British Number 5 Bomber Group, began. The attacking force consisted of about 2,000 bombers with additional support craft, which dropped over 3,000 high explosive and 650,000 incendiary bombs (more commonly known as firebombs) on the center of the city. Incendiary bombs are not known for their efficiency per pound in destroying heavy equipment such as military hardware or railroad tracks, but are extremely effective in producing maximum loss of human life. The loads carried by the bombers were over 75 per cent incendiaries. In fact, the goal of the first wave of the attack was, according to British air commander Sir Arthur Bomber Harris, to set the city well on fire. That he did. The lack of any effective anti-aircraft defenses allowed the bombers to drop to very low altitudes and thus a relatively high degree of precision and visual identification of targets was achieved. Despite the fact that they could clearly see that the marked target area contained hospitals and sports stadia and residential areas of center city Dresden, the bombers nevertheless obeyed orders and rained down a fiery death upon the unlucky inhabitants of that city on a scale which had never before been seen on planet Earth. Hundreds of thousands of innocents were literally consumed by fire, an actual holocaust by the true definition of the word: complete consumption by fire. The incendiaries started thousands of fires and, aided by a stiff wind and the early-on destruction of the telephone exchanges that might have summoned firefighters from nearby towns, these fires soon coalesced into one unimaginably huge firestorm. Now such firestorms are not natural phenomena, and are seldom created by man, so few people have any idea of their nature. Basically, what happened was this: The intense heat caused by the huge column of smoke and flame, miles high and thousands of acres in area, created a terrific updraft of air in the center of the column. This created a very low pressure at the base of the column, and surrounding fresh air rushed inward at speeds estimated to be thirty times that of an ordinary tornado. An ordinary tornado wind-force is a result of temperature differences of perhaps 20 to 30 degrees centigrade. In this firestorm the temperature differences were on the order of 600 to 1,000 degrees centigrade. This inward-rushing air further fed the flames, creating a literal tornado of fire, with winds in the surrounding area of many hundreds of miles per hour--sweeping men, women, children, animals, vehicles and uprooted trees pell-mell into the glowing inferno. But this was only the first stage of the plan. Exactly on schedule, three hours after the first attack, a second massive armada of British bombers arrived, again loaded with high explosive and massive quantities of incendiary bombs. The residents of Dresden, their power systems destroyed by the first raid, had no warning of the second. Again the British bombers attacked the center city of Dresden, this time dividing their targets--one half of the bombs were to be dropped into the center of the conflagration, to keep it going, the other half around the edges of the firestorm. No pretense whatever was made of selecting military targets. The timing of the second armada was such as to ensure that a large quantity of the surviving civilians would have emerged from their shelters by that time, which was the case, and also in hopes that rescue and firefighting crews would have arrived from surrounding cities, which also proved to be true. The firefighters and medics thus incinerated hadn't needed the telephone exchange to know that they were needed--the firestorm was visible from a distance of 200 miles. It is reported that body parts, pieces of clothing, tree branches, huge quantities of ashes, and miscellaneous debris from the firestorm fell for days on the surrounding countryside as far away as eighteen miles. After the attack finally subsided, rescue workers found nothing but liquefied remains of the inhabitants of some shelters, where even the metal kitchen utensils had melted from the intense heat. The next day, Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day, 1945, medical and other emergency personnel from all over central Germany had converged on Dresden. Little did they suspect that yet a third wave of bombers was on its way, this time American. This attack had been carefully coordinated with the previous raids. Four hundred fifty Flying Fortresses and a support contingent of fighters arrived to finish the job at noon. I quote from David Irving's The Destruction of Dresden: "Just a few hours before Dresden had been a fairy-tale city of spires and cobbled streets .... now total war had put an end to all that. ...The ferocity of the US raid of 14th February had finally brought the people to their knees... but it was not the bombs which finally demoralised the people ... it was the Mustang fighters, which suddenly appeared low over the city, firing on everything that moved .... one section of the Mustangs concentrated on the river banks, where masses of bombed-out people had gathered. ... British prisoners who had been released from their burning camps were among the first to suffer the discomfort of machine-gunning attacks .... wherever columns of tramping people were marching in or out of the city they were pounced on by the fighters, and machine-gunned or raked with cannon fire." Ladies and gentlemen, on this program I can only give you a bare glimpse of the inhuman horror of the holocaust of Dresden. In Dresden, no fewer than 135,000 innocent victims died, with some estimates as high as 300,000. More died in Dresden than died in the well-known attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More destruction befell Dresden in one day than was inflicted on the whole of Britain during the entire war. And yet you haven't been told. I urge every one of you to read The Destruction of Dresden by David Irving. I assure you, after reading Irving's book, you will never take seriously the Establishment's version of what happened in that war again. What you ought to take seriously, though, is the fact that the same clique that controlled the traitorous Roosevelt and Churchill governments, whose hatred of our race and civilization and whose alliance with Communism were the real causes of the holocaust of Dresden, still controls our government and our media today. It is they who are pushing for a disarmed, racially mixed America. It is they who promote the teaching of sodomy to our young children. It is they who are destroying our industrial infrastructure in the name of a global economy. It is they who created the drug subculture and then also the police state agencies which pretend to fight it. The hour is very late for America and indeed for all of Western civilization. But if patriots will heed our call, then there is no reason for despair. For the enemies of our nation may have power, but their power is based on lies. Won't you help us cut through the chain of lies that holds our people in mental slavery? ~ National Alliance Main Page http://www.natvan.com

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Re: Copyright violations
by nobody＠wazoo.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dr.Dimitri Vinyl K[unt]OfTheMinute has been fired for stealing blow jobs. _<_ (_|_( Dr.Dimitri Vinyl K[unt]OfTheMinute \-._|_,-, `-----'

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Want a job as a Crypto Researcher or Research Scientist?
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I can't vouch for any of it, and I have my doubts about any company that decides whether you're a "Scientist" based on whether you have a PhD, but I thought it might put a cypherpunk in a position to do some good: Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 13:30:52 -0700 From: dnne <dnne(a)enol.com> Subject: CRYPTO RESEARCHER OR SCIENTIST John, I would greatly appreciate your recommendation. I am trying to fill a RESEARCHER and a RESEARCH SCIENTIST position for a leading East Coast developer of encryption technology for the computer industry. RESEARCHERS will work in conjunction with Research Scientists on research projects covering all aspects of cryptography--from algorithms, to protocols, to implementation. RESEARCHERS also provide technical support to software developers and to the company customers through consulting and educational activities. RESEARCHERS should have at least a B.S. and preferably an M.S. in computer science, mathematics, or a closely related field. Solid exposure to cryptography either through practical experience or within academic pursuits is highly desirable. RESEARCH SCIENTIST candidates should have a Ph.D. or equivalent research experience in cryptography. This company provides a very competitive compensation and benefits package as well as company paid relocation benefits. Thanks, Dan Barrus Senior Technical Recruiter Cutting Edge Technologies Voice: 800-881-7212 Fax: 801-373-3024

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No Subject
by Paul Bradley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunks, I have newsgrouped some further alt.groups as follows: alt.cypherpunks.announce alt.cypherpunks.technical alt.cypherpunks.social I recommend that posters crosspost as follows: All messages, apart from announcements, go to alt.cypherpunks. Alt.cypherpunks.announce holds announcements only and it`s contents is disjoint with that of alt.cypherpunks. Alt.cypherpunks.technical: All posts to this group are also crossposted to alt.cypherpunks alt.cypherpunks.social: All posts to this group are also crossposted to alt.cypherpunks. The newsgroup names are pretty self explanatory but technical is just for technical discussion and social for discussion of social and political issues regarding cryptography. With this crossposting scheme readers can either get the whole content or just the part they want easily without filtering working overtime, for instance, I might choose to subscribe to alt.cypherpunks.technical and only dip into alt.cypherpunks.social when I felt like a flame war ;-) As I said, its only a guideline of course and post what you want where you want but i feel this organisation allows people to easily choose the part of the discussion they want to read. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Re: Recommendation: Creation of "alt.cypherpunks"
by Leonard Janke 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Timothy C. May" <tcmay(a)got.net> writes: > [...] > Given that _political_ discussions of crypto are now encouraged in > _talk_.politics.crypto (emphasis added) rather than sci.crypt, do you think > political and social essays dealing with crypto anarchy, offshore > databases, undermining governments, etc., will be welcome in the "comp" > hierarchy? > > I rather doubt it. And I would bet that if comp.org.cypherpunks is ever > approved, those who dislike crypto anarchy and sociopolitical chatter will > use the "comp" name to try to suppress such discussions. > [...] I think that the statement of our desire to create a new group should clearly indicate that the discussion group is of a special nature due to the tight integration of technical and political discussions. Cypherpunks are trying to achieve political goals through technological means, so it is difficult, and not regarded as desirable to produce a false dichotomy for discussions. As an example, we could cite the Linux newsgroups like comp.os.linux.misc. Linux is a piece of software written to help achieve a political goal, and, thus, in the Linux groups it is not considered off-topic to philosophize about these goals or the future as and after Linux knocks Microsoft out of the market. :) talk.politics.crypto and sci.crypt can, then, easily be argued against since the discussions there are much more restricted than what we desire. > [...] You really think whoever is spamming the list with ASCII art and > broke into Paul's account to post hundreds of "John Gilmore is a > cocksucker" posts will back off because of the "dedication" of some? To the > perverse personality, this is merely a greater challenge and temptation. > [...] Given that you have been on the list a great deal longer than I, I do respect that you may have deeper insights into the mind of the "perverse personality" than I do. I, however, am not aware of evidence that the person or persons behind the disruptions since the middle of last year would try to interrupt a democratic USENET creation vote. My recollection of the history is that the initial attacks were directed at you personally. Dr. Vulis was blamed for them and thus, apparently, became the target of nasty e-mailings to his site. He responded to this by spamming the list with rather large articles on Armenian war crimes and forwardings of the messages. At that point Gilmore booted Vulis. Gilmore then became a target of attack and, it seems that many (presumably) innocent bystanders were unwittingly subscribed to the list in an effort to cause more work, and, hence, annoyance to Gilmore when they complained about the unwanted mail. At this point many new personalities seemed to materialize out of nowhere bent on doing nothing more than fueling flame wars. Then the "moderation experiment" (fiasco)... I do not see in this evidence, however, that any of the disruptors would target the process of the creating a new group USENET group. At first, the the disruptor could easily have rationalized that anonymous, personal attacks were fair play, since anarachists favour no explicit rules with regards to speech. After Vulis was removed by Gilmore the disruptor could then rationalize that "anything goes" since list had then passed from a state of anarchy to one with Gilmore trying to decide who could or not be on the list. (I do not think that these conjectued rationalizations are valid myself, but am just trying to give an my thoughts on the psychology of the "perverse personality".) USENET nesgroup creation is whole new ball game, however. There are explicitly defined rules and the process is intended to be democratic. If my guess as to the identity of the person masterminding the attacks is correct, that person seems to have democratic sympathies or, at least, be strongly opposed to even hints of censorship, so I do not think he would attempt to disrupt the process of deciding if a new group is created or not since that would both be inferring in a democratic process and an attempt to prevent a group of people from creating a discussion group, and thus, himself, becoming a censor. (This makes me think that given that the process is intended to be democratic, it may be more fitting that a more anarchisticly method is used to create an "alt.*" group for cyphepunks than the democratic one used to create a "comp.*" one.) In any case, if you have deeper insights than mine into the mind of the disruptor, or evidence that he or she or them would try to disrupt a comp.* newsgroup creation proces, I would be eager to hear them. Leonard

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[Declan McCullagh: "A List Goes Down In Flames," from Netly]
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 21:24:37 -0800 (PST) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu The Netly News Network http://netlynews.com/ A List Goes Down In Flames by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) February 12, 1997 The plan for the cypherpunks mailing list was simple. It was to be an online gathering place, an intellectual mosh pit, dedicated to the free flow of ideas and personal privacy through encryption. Of course it caught on. From its modest beginnings connecting a few friends who lived in Northern California, it quickly grew into one of the most rowdy, volatile lists on the Net: Cypherpunks typically piped more than 100 messages a day into the mailboxes of nearly 2,000 subscribers. And the list became a kind of crypto-anarchist utopia. Populated by pseudonymous posters with names like Black Unicorn, it was a corner of cyberspace where PGP signatures and digital cash were the norm -- and there were no rules. Then yesterday came the news: The list was being evicted and faced imminent shutdown. In an e-mail seen 'round the Net, John Gilmore, Electronic Frontier Foundation cofounder and list maintainer, announced that he was no longer willing to provide a virtual home for the cypherpunks. In a post entitled "Put Up or Shut Up," he described how his efforts to improve the list through moderation were condemned, how technical problems were consuming more of his time, how pranksters had tried to subscribe the entire U.S. Congress to the list. How this experiment in crypto-anarchy had failed. He gave the cypherpunks 10 days to find new lodgings. "The last straw for me was seeing the reaction of the list to every attempt to improve it. It was to carp, to cut it down, to say you're doing everything wrong," Gilmore told me yesterday night. One of the first employees of Sun, Gilmore quit after eight years -- a millionaire more interested in pursuing ideas than dollars. But his experiment with the list has left him weary. "If everything I'm doing is wrong, I'm clearly not the right person to host the list," he said. "I would like to see some other structure in which the positive interactions on the list could continue. I'm not trying to create that structure anymore," he added. Instead, he would try the only true crypto-anarchist solution: "I'm handing it over to members to do what they wish with it." The cypherpunks first pierced the public's consciousness when Wired magazine splashed them across the cover of the second issue. The Whole Earth Review and the Village Voice followed soon after. The name "cypherpunk" came to be synonymous with a brash young breed of digerati who were intent on derailing the White House's encryption policies and conquering cyberspace. This was crypto with an attitude. Gilmore was typical of the breed. Monthly Bay Area meetings of the 'punks were held in the offices of Cygnus, a company he started to provide support for the free Unix alternative, GNU. But the veteran cypherpunk came under heavy fire in November 1996, when a loudmouthed flamer flooded the list with flame bait and ad hominem attacks on various members. Finally, Gilmore, ironically, gave him the boot -- and incited an all-consuming debate over what the concept of censorship means in a forum devoted to opposing it. In a society of crypto-anarchists, who should make the rules? The mailing list melted down. By last month, it seemed, more messages complained about censorship than discussed crypto. Indeed, for months Gilmore seemed unable to do anything right. He tried moderation, which proved to be even more contentious, raising the question of empowering one cypherpunk to decide what was appropriate for others to read. One member of the group, in effect, would be more equal than the rest. And why would members take the time to write elaborate, thoughtful articles on crypto-politics if their treatises might not make it past the moderator's keyboard? After the expulsion, some of the longtime list denizens left angrily, joining the 700 subscribers who had departed since the controversy began. One of those was Tim C. May, a crusty former Intel engineer who prides himself as the organizer of the first cypherpunk meeting in September 1992. In an essay summarizing the reasons for his departure, he wrote: "The proper solution to bad speech is more speech, not censorship. Censorship just makes opponents of 'speech anarchy' happy -- it affirms their basic belief that censors are needed." After all, May pointed out, the list ended up on Gilmore's toad.com machine only by happenstance -- it almost was housed on a workstation at the University of California at Berkeley. Ownership of the computer with the database of subscribers did not mean that Gilmore owned the cypherpunks. "Whatever our group once was, or still is, is not dependent on having a particular mailing list running on someone's home machine... and it cannot be claimed that any person 'owns' the cypherpunks group," May wrote. The cypherpunks have responded to Gilmore's eviction notice. List participants generally have halted the incessant attacks on Gilmore, and now the discussion has turned to how to continue this experiment in online anarchy -- while preventing one person from ever again having absolute control of the List. Within hours of Gilmore's announcement, posters were tossing around ideas of a distributed network of mailing lists that would carry the cypherpunk name, and other 'punks likely will migrate to the more tightly controlled coderpunks and cryptography lists. But for the true believers in crypto-anarchy, only one solution is adequate: Usenet. "There is no 'nexus' of control, no chokepoint, no precedent... for halting distribution of Usenet newsgroups," Tim May wrote. That, in the end, is what defines a cypherpunk. ###

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Re: crypto restrictions
by Derek Atkins 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

anand abhyankar <anand(a)querisoft.com> writes: > 1) is it illegal to develop an encryption tool (s/w) outside the US > which uses > 40 bit size session keys and then import that s/w inside of > the US. Not currently. -derek -- Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/ PP-ASEL N1NWH warlord(a)MIT.EDU PGP key available

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Re: alt.cypherpunks
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > alt.cypherpunks has been newgroup'ed, and I belive rm'grouped. Smart, > > consiencous newsadmins probably did not honor the rmgroup, as > > alt.cypherpunks should be acceptable, but most newsadmins are too > > overworked to actually look at most of the crap that comes through. > > For example, it hasn't received any messages on my news server, > > probably because the one upstream removed it. > > Seems I'm getting alt.cypherpunks.announce (empty), but not > alt.cypherpunks or any of the others that show up as newgroup'ed on > Deja News... Are they alive and well elsewhere? All of the groups have showed up at news.demon.co.uk (not suprisingly since I grouped them) and I haven`t seen any cancels. I was sent a message by some net.scum about him nearly rmgrouping alt.cypherpunks.announce because it was unmoderated but he got a stern "cypherpunk" talking to for that ;-) Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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